Bulger used smokescreen getaway car, jury told

A murderer told jurors of his days as a close associate of James “Whitey” Bulger, joining him in a double murder in which Bulger wore a wig and fake mustache and escaped in a car capable of sending out a smokescreen or oil slick to deter pursuers.

Kevin Weeks, 57, is the second high-ranking member of Boston’s once- feared Winter Hill crime gang to testify against Bulger, who is accused of 19 murders in the 1970s and 1980s and other charges.

Bulger, 83, who faces life in prison if convicted, spent 16 years dodging the FBI after a corrupt FBI official tipped him off that he was about to be arrested in 1994. He was captured living with his girlfriend in Santa Monica, California, in June 2011.

Weeks testified about two of the murders that Bulger is accused of — Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue, who he suspected of talking with the FBI in 1982. Weeks said Bulger put on a wig and a floppy mustache and waited outside a restaurant where Halloran was dining — only a few blocks from the courthouse where Bulger is now on trial.

When Halloran left the restaurant and got into a car driven by Donahue, Bulger pulled up in his car and called Halloran by his first name.

“Jim Bulger just started shooting right at him,” Weeks testified.

After the shooting, Bulger fled in a 1975 Chevrolet Malibu altered to send out a smokescreen or oil slick.

Bulger wanted the weapons used in the slayings to be dumped except for one part of one rifle “because he liked that stock”: “We didn’t want them to get discovered; those guns were used in a murder... At that time, I was involved in a double homicide, so there really was no getting out.”

Donahue’s son Tommy said: “It’s horrible listening to that. It shakes my whole entire family.”

“I think he’s a liar in a lot of ways,” Donahue said. “He knows exactly who was in the car with Whitey that killed my father, and I think they’ve been protecting him since Day One.”

In exchange for testifying against Bulger, Weeks served just five years in prison after confessing that he was an accessory to five murders. He is the second of three top associates of the gang to testify at the trial, now in its fifth week at US District Court in Boston.